How Ford invented the SQUID

Cooled to a few degrees above absolute zero, a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID, can do something amazing: detect a magnetic field only a millionth as strong as the human brain's, or less than 5 quintillionths of a tesla.· Measuring such minute magnetic fields turns out to be useful for many things, including geophysical and archeological surveys, detection of the cosmic microwave background, nondestructive testing of materials and devices, and imaging the brain, heart, and other body parts. Invented some 50 years ago, the SQUID now comes in dozens of varieties, with different materials and circuitries, and operating temperatures both high (at the liquid-nitrogen range of around 77 kelvins) and low (less than 10 K, in the realm of liquid helium). · Exquisite though they are, SQUIDs seem to have been invented almost accidentally. During the 1950s and 1960s, industrial and academic labs pursued superconductors with nearly the same zeal they were devoting to semiconductors. Bell Telephone Laboratories, General Electric, IBM, RCA, and Westinghouse all had programs in superconductivity. · And yet, the SQUID did not come from any of these august groups. It was invented instead at the Ford Motor Co., whose scientific lab was then a relative upstart on the corporate research scene. Created in 1951 in Dearborn, Mich., the lab operated according to a philosophy that was established by AT&T's Bell Labs and IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and that has now been essentially abandoned. These great institutions pursued research topics not because they were likely to contribute to the parent company's bottom line anytime soon but because the corporation believed that research for research's sake was something a real company did.